Last year I taught AP English for the first time, and yesterday’s dismal test results show that I could have done much better.

Here’s what I would’ve done differently:

1. Take a summer AP workshop.
Our school didn’t have enough money in the budget to send me to a summer workshop. I assumed that good curriculum design and strong teaching would be enough to prepare my students for the exam. Now I think that the summer training was necessary to make sure I designed the course correctly.

2. Assign fewer (shorter) books.
There’s a big debate about how many books to teach. I took the suburban approach: Read lots. But the test doesn’t care about the number of books you’ve read. Rather, it cares about whether you know how to read intensely difficult, obscure texts. Therefore, classroom time needed to be less discussion of literature and more close reading, line by line, of challenging prose and poetry. Forget about The Catcher in the Rye and focus more on Heart of Darkness. Also, see #5.

3. Assign fewer essays and focus on thinking.
My theory of action was that if students had a lot of practice and wrote under the pressure of the clock, they’d be fine. But what happened was that my students never got good at first-draft writing. Only after extensive revision did their essays exhibit clear thinking and grammar. I should have done more training in class with the workshop model. Once the students had the basic essay structure down, we needed to work more on analysis. Yes, this is a reading skill, too — and the only way to improve it is live in the classroom.

4. Teach more directly about literature.
The AP test does not measure content, but the more exposed you are to literature, the better off you are. Because my students haven’t read as many books as their more privileged counterparts, I needed to close that gap with more direct teaching on topics like Shakespeare, the literary periods, and academic language. My students, who have different background knowledge, can’t “fake it” as well as their suburban peers. I should spent more time making them literary nerds.

5. Learn how to teach the reading section of the exam.
Ugh. Have you seen this test? It’s basically a harder version of the SAT. You’ve got your challenging reading passages that come out of nowhere. Then there are the multiple-choice questions with no clear correct answer. I never figured out a way to help my students improve on the reading section. Their scores were flat. They wouldn’t budge no matter what we did. For the most part, how they scored in October was similar to how they did in May. Worse, I couldn’t tell you what I’d do differently.

* * *

Last summer, when I prepared to teach this course, I had to make a decision: Should I try to get the students to pass the exam? To be sure, a test-driven curriculum would not necessarily inspire my students to love reading and writing. But I went for it because I thought it was authentic and the right thing to do. The AP, whether you like it or not, is about the test.

I don’t regret my decision, but now that my students and I have failed, I am concerned about their reaction. What will this mean for them? They worked hard, trusted themselves and their teacher, and participated in something they otherwise wouldn’t have done because they had faith in the process.

Now they’re finding out that even when they’re at their best, even when they tried and didn’t give up, they’re still less than average.

How will they process this failure? And how will they remember this class, their time together? 

 This was one of my best years teaching. Thank you to my students, colleagues, contributors, and donors. You’ve made teaching fun again.

This is also the first year I’ve written consistently about my teaching. I’m grateful to all the Iserotope readers out there for being interested in learning more about my random thoughts.

The past few days, I’ve been in a reflective mood, so I’ve looked back at some posts. Here are my favorite five posts of the year (in no particular order). Take a look if you’re interested!

1. Your homework is due tonight.
Why have your homework due at the beginning of class when it can be due the night before? Isn’t homework supposed to be done at home, anyway? Although my students protested against this new policy, they turned in a higher percentage of homework on time when it was due at night.

2. “I’m still here.”
I battled with a student the first semester. She thought I was doing too much. I thought she was doing too little. But then one Sunday in February, this student asked for help online, and I didn’t let go.

3. CCSA’s public call for charter school closures is wrong.
My school nearly closed this year because a state charter school association sent out a mean-spirited memo. This post analyzes the association’s faulty reasoning and ridiculous logic. Luckily, our District saw through it all and unanimously renewed our school’s charter in February.

4. Donate your old Kindle to my classroom!
This is the tiny post that started the Kindle donation deluge. Who would have thought that 100 words would yield 10 Kindles and 130 e-books? I was blown away by the generous donors who believe strongly in reading and my students. Iserotope readers contributed a total of more than $3,000 to my classroom this year. Sure, I taught my heart out, but you need high-quality materials in order to teach well. Plus, kids like stuff.

5. “He used to hate reading.”
As a society, we really believe that young people don’t like to read. This is just false. If we give students choice in what they read, and if we give them time to read, students will read and will enjoy reading. This post was just one of the many reading transformation stories that occurred this year. As a teacher, there are few things better than witnessing a student getting re-hooked on reading.

Do you have a favorite post that I missed? Please share it! And thank you again for a great year. 

 I’m finishing Year 15 as a teacher, and right now, I’m at a low. My students are sleepwalking to graduation. They’re done when I’m just getting started.

Being negative, though, gets me to reflect on what makes a successful class. It’s pretty easy, actually. Here are the three ingredients, in order of importance:

1. All students come to class every day.
This builds a common experience.

2. All students are nice to each other.
This builds a safe learning environment.

3. All students turn their assignments in on time.
This accelerates learning.

Pretty simple, right? I wish. This year, attendance has fluctuated. I can’t have a successful class unless there’s a common, shared story. Even if absent students follow up when they miss class, they’ve missed the experience.

Though I’ve struggled with attendance, I’m happy to report that my students have, in general, been nice and respectful with each other. There’s no way to teach if that’s not happening.

Unfortunately, my students have had trouble turning in assignments on time. Tonight, for example, I received 18 out of 23 essays on time. That’s horrible and inexcusable. This phenomenon puts the student behind, makes me backtrack, and prevents the class from moving forward. Similar to #1, it hurts the common experience.

I’m old-fashioned when it comes to good teaching and learning. Despite my interest in technology, and despite my realization that we might be heading into more asynchronous learning environments, I believe that the best classes still include a group of students and a teacher thinking and working on something together. 

 I love reading and I love technology. That’s why I love having Kindles in my classroom.

This semester, I used my five classroom Kindles (now six — thanks, Wil!) in two ways: (1) to promote independent reading in my Advisory, (2) to promote close reading in AP English.

Here’s what I’ve found:

1. Some students love reading on the Kindle.  One of my advisees reported that she read much more this semester than ever before. Usually, I let my advisees borrow a Kindle for a month. She wouldn’t give hers back!

2. The Kindle is not as good for close academic reading as it is for immersive independent reading. One of my students in AP English said she liked annotating books on the Kindle, but most said the device was difficult to navigate. Specifically, the lack of page numbers on many titles led to student confusion and difficulty in following along in discussion with the rest of the class.

3. The Kindle is great for students who struggle with reading. One of my students used the Kindle’s text-to-speech to help her through a challenging book. The ability to change the font size on the Kindle also helps readers persist through frustration.

4. The Kindle is not great at helping students find books to read. Although my classroom Kindles hold many high-interest books, my students have trouble selecting new ones to read. That’s partly because the Kindle interface does little to connect readers to new books. Yes, you can view the book’s title, but it’s not in color. Yes, you can search the Amazon store, but that’s not ideal. After all, there’s nothing on the Kindle that’s equivalent to having a large classroom library with physical books with colorful covers.

5. The Kindle’s tech novelty wears off quickly for students — but that’s a good thing. Some students’ excitement for the E-Ink Kindle may drop over time. But what I love about the Kindle is that there are no distractions. It’s a reading device, and that’s what it’s for.

For next semester, I plan on focusing my Kindle project solely on independent reading in my Advisory. Instead of distributing my six Kindles to two different projects, I’m going to put more resources into what the Kindle is good at: immersive reading.

Because my students are seniors and ready to graduate, I have just a few months to ensure that they become lifelong readers. I look forward to the task of connecting my students to high-quality books that speak to them and challenge their perspective of the world.

One more thing: I have exciting news! This Friday, my student Antonio and I will be on The Kindle Chronicles, Len Edgerly’s podcast “all about your Kindle.” It’s an honor to be on the show, which I’ve listened to for more than a year. I hope you’ll check out the podcast this Friday! 

 One of the reasons all my students passed last semester is that I intervened early. I identified four struggling students and encouraged them to attend office hours after school every Tuesday.

For the most part, they did — and their effort paid off. In addition to my support, my students each got a personal grammar coach to help them one-on-one with their writing. It was pretty neat.

Now that it’s Winter Break, I’m trying to figure out how I can best use my lunch and after-school time to support my students. After all, besides the students I forced, only a few others attended office hours regularly. That left me underutilized.

If my students really want to pass the AP test, they will need to extend their learning day. And they will need me to push them.

My current idea is to split up my class into five groups and to have them attend office hours as a cohort once per week for 30 minutes. At our weekly meetings, we’d do a variety of activities, depending on what we’re doing in class or based on the group’s needs.

Thirty minutes a week doesn’t sound like much, but I’m hopeful that the time will lead to additional learning opportunities outside office hours. Right now, my students don’t naturally depend on each other for support. By introducing this structure, I am hopeful that we’ll see some momentum, some urgency.

On the negative side, by mandating that my students attend — and by prescribing how we’ll work together — I do run the risk of being less available for students when their curiosity (or anxiety) emerges naturally. It’s possible that their intrinsic motivation will decline.

What do you think? How should I organize office hours next semester? 

 Although I want to improve as a teacher (and I will!), it’s also important to acknowledge some of my accomplishments this semester.

Here are a few of them:

1. I have rediscovered my joy and passion for teaching. I’ve always known, despite years of struggle, that teaching is at my center. It’s what I do. This semester, teaching has begun to be fun again.

2. I have regained my confidence. It’s important to remember that I’m good at this job. There is much to improve, of course, but it’s also clear that what I do helps students.

3. All my students passed. I gave out no failing grades. This has never happened before. I’m proud of the support I provided, and I’m happy that my students saw me as a coach. It wasn’t easy, but I made significant progress in providing academic intervention.

4. My class website, iseroma.com, has become an interactive learning space. Students take pride in posting their work. They write comments to each other. The dialogue continues outside of the classroom.

5. I have written regularly on this blog. Writing has helped me reflect and make changes more quickly than talking (which sometimes becomes venting). My favorite part, though, has been seeing comments to my posts. My teaching improves because of your insight.

6. I have taught a meaningful and rigorous AP English course. I’m making several improvements next semester (stay tuned!), but I’m happy to say that I’m proud of the work I’ve done so far.

Next semester, I hope to focus on reading, my #1 passion — in my class, in my Advisory, in my school. Let me know your ideas! 

 It’s Finals Week, so that means that instead of helping my students with their exams and projects, I’m thinking about ways to improve my teaching next semester.

Topic #1: Reading.

I must say, I’m a tad obsessed with reading. It sort of makes me crazy, actually. My general feeling about reading is that everybody says it’s important but nobody does it anymore.

In To Read or Not to Read (2007), the National Endowment for the Arts concluded that 15- to 24-year-olds read an average of 7 minutes a day.

When I wrote my AP English syllabus in August, I decided that my students and I would study 12 books this year. That’s a lot, but I did the math: If students read 20 pages a day, six days a week, we could get there.

It just hasn’t happened. I mean, we’ve studied six novels so far. But it’s pretty clear that all my students haven’t really read them closely (if at all). Here’s why:

1. My students don’t yet read consistently on their own. They might read on Monday but then skip Tuesday. We need to build daily habits.

2. If the book is difficult, my students read really slowly. I can’t fault them for this. If I want them to study the books and annotate them, I must meet them where they are.

3. When you’re overloaded with work, reading always comes last. If I’m a student and have three hours of homework, most likely I’m going to put reading off until the end (when I’m most tired).

It’s pretty easy for me to figure out what’s going wrong about reading, but it’s really hard to figure out how to make things better. But I do have some ideas. I’d like to hear yours, too. Here are mine for next semester:

1. Read four books (more) closely, rather than six superficially. My fear is that I’m lowering the standard and that my students will follow suit and read even less. But I was looking at The Scarlet Letter today (which we’re reading in January), and no normal person can actually understand that in two weeks. After all, “physiognomy” and “ignominious” are run-of-the-mill words in the novel.

2. Require reading and evidence of reading every night. This semester, I broke up the reading into chunks — sort of like college — and told students to make their own schedules. Wrong! If my students don’t yet read every night, I must force it on them. But the question is how. I’m not interested in reading quizzes or thought journals. Annotations work for students who do them, not for ones who don’t (or who fake them). In addition, I don’t want to have to check their reading every day (including weekends). I’ll have to think more about this.

3. Spend more time in class reading and talking about reading. This semester, I focused on writing, especially on Mondays, when we did AP test practice essays. If I’m going to make progress with reading, I’m going to have to devote much more class time to it. I just don’t know exactly how.

4. Build the social aspect of reading. This semester, I tried online video chats to promote reading, especially on weekends. But the technology just didn’t work well enough. So my latest idea is to do more in-class group activities with the books and to do regular one-on-one conferences with my students on their reading.

Please let me know what you think — and if you have ideas.